The son of a farmer, Omar al-Bashir was born in 1944 in Hoshe Bannaga, which then formed part of the Kingdom of Egypt and Sudan. After completing secondary school, he studied at the national military academies in Cairo and then Khartoum, where he graduated in 1966.

Rising swiftly through the ranks, he became a paratrooper and fought in the Egyptian army in the Arab-Israeli war in October 1973. He served at least one tour in the south in the early years of the civil war against the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.

In 1989, General Bashir led a group of army officers in a bloodless military coup against the civilian government of the then prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi, "to save the country from rotten political parties".

Another motivation was stopping a peace agreement to end the southern war, which would have allowed secular law in the south.

Proclaiming himself chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, Bashir suspended all political parties, trade unions and government bodies.

In 1993, he appointed himself president, dissolved the military junta and returned Sudan to civilian rule. He had found an ally in Hassan al-Turabi, an Islamist politician with links to Arab militant groups who had invited the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, to set up base in Sudan.

The flirtation with terrorism alienated many western countries as well as Sudan's neighbours, and eventually saw Bashir split with Turabi.

By 2000, when he was elected for a second official term in what was still effectively a one-party state, Bashir was coming under intense international pressure to end the civil war in the south that had caused the deaths of nearly 2 million people.

After extensive negotiations, Bashir and the rebel leader John Garang signed a peace agreement in Nairobi in January 2005, granting southern Sudan autonomy and a referendum on independence in six years.

But Bashir's status as an international pariah was not about to end – the war in Darfur had already begun, and was about to bring him more trouble than the southern conflict ever did.

Though he keeps his personal life private, Bashir is regarded as a proud and egotistical man who reacts aggressively to perceived slights against him.

Pragmatic at times, he has liberalised Sudan's economy to take advantage of oil production and has established strong trade ties with countries such as China and Russia.

Married to his cousin Fatima Khalid, and to a second wife, Widad Babiker, Bashir has no children.